Yeah, we had one of the "local experts" say in her newspaper column, "the antique roses that are once bloomers, blooming only in the spring". *** It may hold true for gardens in harsh-winter climates. But out here, the roses which have survived with no care for a century or more are remontant things like Chinas, Teas, and Noisettes. Oh, and Polyanthas. So when someone in CA writes with certainty that "Old Roses only bloom once," I get sorta testy! Particularly when our remontant Old Roses are flat the easiest roses to grow under our conditions. Jeri

I'm hoping for another book by Julia R. Fleming about the helicopter pilot turned Episcopal minister, with 'feelings' for her small town's chief of police. Dramatic, very human characters, *funny*, unpredictable. I liked Anne Perry's books set in England between the wars, but she began to repeat herself -- writing too much, too fast? DH and I ejoyed Silva's books featuring Gabriel Allon, but...eventually the character is running out of steam. Great plots! Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko is another great character. ("Gorky Park", etc.) Love Sandford, Robert Crais, the late Donald Westlake. (So sad there will be no more from him.) S. J. Rozan! Her Chinese-American detective Lydia Chin and her 'friend'. ("The Coldest Place") Who is the author who writes about books and book sellers? Lives Minneapolis, I think. May I mention my modern favorite book, "City of Thieves"? A 'fairy tale', a mystery, reads like Dostoevski might have written it if he'd lived through WWII. Alan Furst -- "The Polish Officer", etc. Philip Kerr's character Bernie Gunther in the "Berlin Noir Trilogy" and more. (Another character who must eventually wind down...so sad.) Oh-oh, I've really stayed from the OP's request. Sorry, Susan.

Finished a rather fun read of Love Among the Butterflies by Margaret Fountaine, a collection of her diary entries which detail her wide travels across the world collecting butterflies (and sometimes men). [grin] Fountaine was a vicar's daughter (I think) who grew up at the tail end of Victoria and the beginning of Edwardian days, and as she was not married, she found herself somewhat unoccupied. She started to collect butterflies, and after a while, became a serious entomologist and traveled across the world adding pieces to her large collection. (Lots of overlaps with Edith Holden here.) So - clearly, this is an unorthodox woman for the times: she travels widely to countries not familiar to a lot of people back then, she ends up having a long-term relationship (and traveling with) a man from Syria, she becomes an expert in butterflies... It's quite admirable just how far she pushed acceptability in female terms back then, but it did come with a price. She really struggles to reconcile her love of freedom with the cultural expectations of the time with regard to spinsters and marriage and "suitable" partners. Despite all her travel experience, she stays curiously unhappy throughout her life (at least as told in these entries). She is very defensive all the time, but was heartless to those who kept her close to their hearts. Her Syrian lover could not be publicly acknowledged for many years, and although they travel and work well together, she insisted on them having different rooms and standards (despite their relationship), and she could never grasp that he was in love with her for realz. In their rather frequent seperations, she would drive herself to distraction imagining various horrible scenes involving him and an accident or another woman etc. Fountaine does acknowledge in her diaries that she adores her freedom, but anything that seems to threaten that state of affairs immediately puts her into a tailspin of being mean to her family, friends and lovers, of acting selfishly and generally being a bit of a pinhead. However, just because she was rather an unkind person doesn't make this book any less fascinating. The illustrations taken from her diary pages are intriguing to look at: her writing is immaculate with very few errors and she justifies her handwriting on every page. (Goodness - how to do that without making a crossing-out every now and then, who knows?). She had volumes of diaries and numerous boxes of butterfly specimens that she bequeathed to a museum, but only with the condition that the museum administration do not open the diary box for 40 years after her death. This agreement was stuck to, and so they waited for the correct time. Thus were found the diaries. So - good read overall. Woodnymph - you mentioned earlier that you had a copy but it was only a paperback and had type that was difficult to read. Would you like me to send you this copy? It's only going to the library book sale otherwise,...

I am about halfway through A Legacy of Spies by John Le Carre and am enjoying it more than the last several of his books. It's good to be back to the old days with George Smiley. In the mail today, I received a copy of the Bas Bleu book catalog. Besides a couple of books I would like, there is a page-a-day calendar with Unforgettable Senior Moments quotes such as "At 88, how do you feel when getting up in the morning?" Answer: "Amazed!" and a book tote that reads "There are a million books that I haven't read, but just you wait!"